Change mindset, set up open jails, advises Supreme Court

TNN | Dec 20, 2017, 08.12 AM IST

NEW DELHI: Emphasising the need for a change of mindset of governments to make jail a reformative and rehabilitative place for people who are caught on the wrong side of the law, the Supreme Court has favoured setting up of open jails where inmates are not confined to the boundaries of the jail and allowed to live with their family members outside the jail during the day and earn livelihood on their own. Holding that criminal justice system in the country is based on reformation and rehabilitation of criminals, a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta said that the governments must take humane approach towards prisoners and directed the Centre to convene a meeting with the Directors General and Inspectors General of Prison of all states and union territories to examine the feasibility of setting up of open jail in each district.

“The Ministry of Home Affairs will send a communication to the concerned authorities in the state and UTs asking for their response to the idea of open prisons – whether they are willing to set up open prisons and the manner in which the open prisons could be operated. The concerned authorities should respond to the Ministry preferably within a period of four weeks and the meeting will be held immediately thereafter in the first week of February, 2018,” the court said.

The court said that prisoners are forced to live an inhuman life in overcrowded jails with no basic facilities and many of them were committing suicide and dying unnatural death. It said that open jail system could pave the way to allow them to live with dignity and help them to foster a sense of self- worth in the prisoners. It passed the order on a plea of advocate Gaurav Agrawal, who is assisting the court as amicus curiae, seeking its direction to states to set up open jails in each district. The bench had taken suo motu cognisance in 2012 on pathetic condition in 1382 prisons in the country and has been passing directions from time to time to improve the condition.

“This Court has time and again emphasized the importance of Article 21 of the Constitution and the right to a life of dignity. There must be a genuine desire to ensure that the guarantee to a life of dignity is provided to the extent possible even in prisons, otherwise Article 21 will remain a dead letter. It must be appreciated by the state that the common person does not violate the law for no reason at all. It is circumstances that lead to a situation where there is a violation of law,” the bench said.

“On many occasions, such a violation may be of a trivial nature or may be a one- time aberration and, in such circumstances, the offender has to be treated with some degree of humanity. At least in such cases, retribution and deterrence cannot be an answer to the offence and the offender. Unless the State changes this mindset and takes steps to give meaning to life and liberty of every prisoner, prison reforms can never be effective or long lasting,” it said.

The first open jail was set up near Jaipur in Rajasthan way back in 1954 when prisoners were allowed to stay with their family members and were allowed to work in the agricultural firms. Over the years the concept has been followed by other states also and at present there are 63 open jails in the country. Amongst these states, Rajasthan has the highest number of 29 open jails followed by Maharashtra (13) Kerala, Tamil Nadu (3 each) and Gujarat & West Bengal (2 jails each). The remaining 11 States- Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Telangana and Uttarakhand have one open jail each.

Referring to a report prepared by Smita Chakraburtty, who did extensive work on comparative analysis of open and tradition jail, Agrawal contended that the open prison system was cost effective, led to social integration of the prisoners and reduced prison overcrowding.

“The biggest benefit of open prison system is that it is cost effective in as much as a comparative study between an open prison and a close prison shows that the open prison is 78 times cheaper than the close prison. The report shows how the maintenance of open prison does not cost the exchequer much. Further, the cost of creation of an open prison is comparatively much lesser as compared to close prison as the security apparatus, land requirements, infrastructure requirement etc is much higher in a traditional prison,” he said.